The paper examines whether central banks should be committed to achieving price stability (a low-inflation target), and how strong (explicit) their long-term monetary commitment should be. For that purpose we propose a game theoretic framework that enables us to model various degrees of commitment, as well as its endogenous deter- mination. Our main policy contribution consists in showing that the socially optimal degree of long-term monetary commitment depends on: (i) the potential short-term cost in terms of reduced stabilization flexibility, (ii) the potential benefi?t in terms of better anchored expectations, (iii) the structure of the economy, (iv) agents' expectations for- mation, and (v) the degrees of the central bank's conservatism (strictness) and ambition. The latter point implies substitutability between explicit inflation targeting and central bank goal-independence, and offers a possible explanation for the fact that countries with originally low degrees of central bank goal-independence have tended to commit more explicitly to price stability (legislate a unitary or hierarchical mandate rather than a dual mandate).
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Paper provided by Australian National University, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in its series CAMA Working Papers with number
2009-01.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination
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